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Don’t be anxious, get out and find your next job!

“Sometimes I wonder if there is anyone who doesn’t have anxiety, or if it’s just a fact of living. Perhaps sanity isn’t a lack of anxiety but just learning to hide it or ignore it.”

I wrote those words on April 22, 2013, and I never meant for anyone to see them. At the time, I was waiting for word from a PhD program that had me on a wait list. I was working at a restaurant and making good money. I was writing many days of the week and meditating every day before I went to work.

I thought I was doing everything right: I had all the tools and I was using all of the correct coping mechanisms, but the waiting complicated everything else.

So what’s changed?

I’m (thankfully!) no longer waiting. I won’t be going to school in a few weeks, but I will hopefully be getting a job rather than a bunch of loans. And finding that job involves doing. Once I started applying for jobs, I almost can’t stop. I applied for seven jobs yesterday.

A little over a year ago, I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything but teaching. Right now, the world is my oyster. I have so many skills that I have learned from my teaching and serving jobs (small and large group management, public speaking, budgets, project and event management, editing; technical, fiction, and prose writing; stakeholder communication, the list goes on!) that I really am a valuable commodity to any company.

I’m still waiting, but I’m no longer anxious. I have little time to allow that anxiety to take over because I’m too busy doing to be anxious. Don’t sit around and wait for them to call you, go out and find the next job, or the next one, or the next…